A Nonlinear Power Feedback Improvement of the Ship Course-Keeping Controller

In order to simplify the design process of the controller, improve the robustness of the system, and save the energy output of the controller, a controller improved by nonlinear feedback is designed. First of all, by constructing the Lyapunov function, the controller design process is simplified, and the nonlinear control law is avoided to cancel the nonlinear term of the system; then, the heading error processed by the power function is used to replace the nonlinear feedback term of the heading error itself; finally, the training ship “Yupeng†was used as an example for system simulation. Compared with the pure backstepping method, the simulation results show that the average energy cost of heading keeping of the proposed algorithm is reduced by 21.7%, and the maximum energy cost of heading tracking is reduced by 34.9%, with the strong anti-interference ability. Studies have shown that the introduction of nonlinear feedback terms can optimize the control system, save energy, and enhance robustness, which is of great significance in practical engineering applications.